Techniques for digital transmission of television programs promise increased flexibility, higher resolution, and better fidelity. Recent industry collaborations have brought digital television closer to reality; digital television transmission and storage standards have been generated, and consumer digital audio/video storage and retrieval products have begun to appear. The move toward digital audio/video has been encouraged by the commercialization of digital technologies in general, such as personal computers and compact discs, both of which have increased consumer awareness of the possibilities of digital technology.
Personal computers, which have recently become common and inexpensive, contain much of the computing hardware needed to reproduce digital audio/video programs, including a microprocessor/coprocessor for performing numeric calculations, input and output connections, and a large digital memory for storing and manipulating image data. Unfortunately, personal computers are not suitable for consumer digital television reception or digital audio/video decoding, because the microprocessor in a personal computer is a general purpose processor, and typically cannot perform the calculations needed for decompression of digital video fast enough to produce full-motion, high definition video output.
Accordingly, there is a need for a special purpose processor particularly suited for performing digital audio/video-related calculations, which can be used as a digital audio/video receiver in consumer applications.